Walt Disney World, Part 6 Magic Kingdom 12/28/06

YoshiFan

I know there was a long gap in between sections but I figured I would still write the next section and post it:

Day 7, 12/28/06

Today was another full day at the Magic Kingdom.

The Ticket and Transportation Center was much more crowded than on Tuesday despite it still being somewhat early. I knew that meant the park was going to be filled to capacity and lines would be bad.

After getting into the park we went right to Tomorrowland since we had hardly been there on Tuesday. The first thing I did was grab a fast pass for Space Mountain which already had a 45 minute wait.

After that we headed to the Tomorrowland Speedway. The line was about 25 minutes. This is my favorite car ride in a park though Busch Garden’s Le Mans was a close 2nd. It’s a long track compared to most car rides and I like how it’s placed near Space Mountain and Mickey’s Toontown Fair.

Next we went to the Carousel of Progress. This is one of my favorite shows at Disney as I like to see how people lived in the past and how technology and inventions have made life more convenient over the years. It’s a shame that this attraction isn’t that popular as the theater wasn’t even 2/3 full and there were more people waiting in line to meet Buzz Lightyear at the side of the entrance than the amount of people waiting for the attraction. I really hope Disney keeps this ride for years and doesn’t get rid of it especially for another Pixar attraction.

It was time for the Space Mountain fastpass so I went to Space Mountain while the rest of my family got fastpasses for Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin and went to see the High School Musical Pep Rally.

In the short amount of time from when I got my fastpass until now, the wait was up to 90 minutes with the line well out of the building and almost up to the Astro Orbiter. I figured the fastpass return would be bad too. Every time I go into this queue, I am always amazed at how long you are walking and how it never seems to end. I’d hate to be standing in that standby line. The fastpass line was barely past the point where they take the fastpass. Usually the lines merge at this point but they were sending fastpass people into a shorter line where as the standby line had some switchbacks before the loading area. The line was a little less than 10 minutes and they asked for a group of 2 to fill a rocket and I motioned I was a single rider and got to skip a few minutes of waiting. I had my choice of seat 5 and 6 and chose 6 because I remember getting some airtime in past trips in the last seat.

The tunnel with the blue lights is awesome and a great way to start the ride. We started up the lift hill and were soon at the top. I was really looking forward to this ride as it has been of my favorite coasters. About 15 seconds into the ride I realized something…this ride was very rough. It was one of the roughest rides I had on a coaster and although I did get some airtime, all I could think of was how disappointed I was with the ride. It always seems like a longer coaster ride compared to most, I guess because it isn’t that fast and somewhat long for a non hyper steel coaster. By the time we got to the red tunnel and stopped, my head was hurting for a few seconds. It was actually rougher than both boomerangs I went on this past summer. I later heard similar complaints online that the back is rougher but I don’t remember it being this rough in past trips. Due to the lines, I didn’t have the time to give the ride another chance this trip and hope it was just an isolated case.

The High School Musical Pep Rally wasn’t over for another 10 minutes so I stopped at the arcade at the exit of Space Mountain to play a round of DDR. I saw a Pump It Up machine where the DDR cabinet was but then saw it was moved to another part of the arcade. The arcade looked amazing with lots of cool games I had never seen before (I have no arcades in my area other than in family entertainment centers).

Thankfully no one was playing and didn’t have to wait. The machine they have is Disney’s Rave which is fitting since you are in a Disney park and are in a Disney mood while in the Magic Kingdom. I chose the Electrical Parade Remix (which reminded me of how much I liked the Main Street Electrical Parade), Johnny B. Goode (not Disney I know) and It’s A Small World.

I caught the end of the High School Musical Pep Rally show and it looked to be good if you are a fan of the movie but I have never seen the movie and have no interest in seeing it so I really didn’t care but I hated that it was in Tomorrowland. After Tomorrowland, we went to Fantasyland and grabbed fastpasses for the Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh and went back into Tomorrowland to have lunch at Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Café.

The place was packed but it was so crowded they had one set of doors on one side of the restaurant for entering the building and another set of doors on the other side of the restaurant for exiting. By the time we left the restaurant, there was a line to get in the building because it was filled to maximum capacity. I have never seen that before and just shows how crowded the park was.

It still wasn’t time for our fastpasses so we went into Mickey’s Toontown Fair next. I checked out Barnstormer’s line and it was posted at 60 minutes even with 2 trains running (which I think is rare for a Vekoma Jr. coaster). There was no way I was going to wait that long for such a short coaster so we went to the train station and took a full circuit on the railroad. I like the ride since it’s a huge track and it takes you past some backstage areas like the roads behind the lands.

After the railroad it was time to head back to Winnie The Pooh. I miss Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and hate how they closed it for this ride (I think they should have built it where that playground is now). I like the ride system where the cars tilt and “bounce” depending on the show scenes like the tilting when moving through the rain storm.

We then went to Frontierland and got fastpasses for Splash Mountain which wasn’t for a few hours. That was fine though as we had early dinner reservations at the Contemporary.

We went to the Emporium and did some shopping before leaving the park to go to Dinner.

Chef Mickey’s is one of my favorite restaurants at WDW but it wasn’t as great as past trips because of the dining plan. The service was great with the waiter bringing soda refills without us even asking and the characters spent a long time at each table but the food quality seemed lower. For example, with the desserts they used to have huge slices of cake. This was replaced with small mini desserts that weren’t as fancy. I also noticed less food choices on the main buffet. I think they made these changes because of the dining plan.

After dinner we headed back into the Magic Kingdom and went to Splash Mountain. Luckily we did not get stopped on the ride as we did 2 days ago but after getting off the ride and walking past the ride we noticed the water was not running on the drops and the logs were stopped. The ride had broken down again. I’m just glad we weren’t stuck on the ride again.

We headed back into Fantasyland and went back on It’s A Small World which was a 5 minute wait and went back on Peter Pan’s Flight which was 45 minutes. After those rides Wishes had started which meant a lot of rides in Fantasyland were closed. Soon after Wishes were over the rides opened up again which meant walk-ons. We went to Philar Magic again and then headed to Cinderella’s Golden Carousel. Not much to say about that ride as it’s the same ride you can find anywhere although it was much nicer than a standard Carousel.

Snow White’s Scary Adventure was next with a 10 minute wait. I know they changed the ride from Scary Adventures to Adventures and then back to Scary Adventures and definitely feel they made the right choice to call it Scary Adventures again. There were a lot of times in the ride especially when going through the forest that I thought would be very scary to little kids and most people probably think since it’s in Fantasyland, it won’t be that scary. It’s a fun ride but kind of short like most of the Fantasyland dark rides.

Dumbo was 15 minute wait and for some reason, we decided to wait. Not much to say about Dumbo either but I don’t see how anyone can stand waiting the 45 – 60 minute waits it had earlier in the day.

I wanted to go back to Barnstormer and see if the wait was reasonable. It was only a 5 minute wait and although it’s a fun ride for a kiddie/family coaster, it’s not worth the hour wait it had earlier.

We went back into Adventureland and walked by Pirates which had a 55 minute standby wait time and they had switchbacks filled in the entrance area. Seeing that, we walked to Jungle Cruise which was a walk on. It’s a lot different to go on the ride at night and a lot more fun in my opinion because the lights on the jeep at the camp for example stand out and it seems a little more spooky/scary at night especially when entering the Temple.

We went back to Pirates which now had a posted 15 minute wait time which makes me think the 55 minutes was wrong. I already gave my opinion of the ride in the other section so I won’t go into details again.

It was getting late so we left the park and had to get ready for our final day at WDW, another visit to Animal Kingdom.